Joe Friel's Blog is for the serious endurance athlete who wants to stay current on the science and art of training for sport. Here you will find Joe Friel's thoughts and ideas before they are published anywhere else. You may also visit www.TrainingBible.com for more detailed and free content. Joe's training plans are available at www.TrainingPeaks.com.

09/08/2013

In
the last five posts here I’ve been examining the effects of aging on my
training, racing and life in general (vision, recovery, more on recovery and vision, race weight, performance). It appears that I’m starting to realize the consequences of 69 years of
living. Due in part to my level of physical activity for most of those nearly seven decades I’ve seen very little reason to be concerned about my decline. It’s
been minimal to non-existent. But as I explained in my last post on performance, the changes seem to be accelerating this year as I approach my 70 birthday in
a couple of months. Or are they? It’s hard to see the forest for the trees. I’m
sure it will be a year or more until I know for sure. But for right now I’m
focused on understanding what’s happening and doing my best to control the rate
of decline.

So
what is it that happens to athletes as we age? There is a ton of research on
this topic, some better than others. There are two types of studies you find when searching the
scientific literature. The most common are called “cross-sectional” studies.
These examine two groups of subjects – one “older” group (the researchers are
kind in never referring to us as “old”) and a group of young athletes. They
typically assign these groups so that gender, body size, training and other variables are
similar. Then they simply measure the physiological differences between the two
groups and assume the differences are the result of aging. These studies are relatively easy to do because, for one thing, they don’t take
much time. The study can be completed in a few weeks time.

The
other type of aging study is “longitudinal.” This is the gold standard. A group
of athletes is studied over time, often for several years or even decades, to see
what happens to them physiologically speaking. Cross-sectional studies are
hugely dependent on how the subjects were selected (was a key element of change
unaccounted for when selecting the subjects, such as lifestyle or diet or
smoking or type of work or even culture?). Something overlooked could account
for much of the change and have little or nothing to with aging. That would
render the results useless in trying to understand what happens to athletes as
they age.

On
the other hand, in longitudinal studies the independent variables are just a
part of life and can be assumed to help account, at least in part, for the
physiological changes taking place over time. They sometimes become obvious
predictors of change, such as reducing training load or stopping training
altogether. The data is more reliable since it’s real people living real lives as we follow their progress.
The downside of these studies is that the researchers must invest years and
years into following the subjects (people move, become difficult to reach and even die) and
measuring the changes the athletes experience in their lives. It may be 10 or
20 years – or even longer – until the study is completed, and there’s no
guarantee it will be published then.

So,
with all of this in mind, what does the research say we should experience as we
become “older” endurance athletes? Here’s a partial shopping list of changes as
revealed in some of the research:

Declining VO2max

Reduced maximal heart rate

Decreased volume of blood
pumped with each heart beat

Lowered lactate threshold

Less economical movement
resulting in wasted energy

A decrease in muscle fibers
and strength

Less effective and less
abundant aerobic enzymes

Reduced blood volume

Loss of muscle mass

There’s more, but that’s
enough to make you want to avoid birthday parties. Incidentally, not all of the
research agrees on all of the above results of aging.

Which of these do I seem to
be experiencing now? Is there anything that can be done to delay and reduce the
negative changes? I’ll address that in my coming posts. Stay tuned.

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09/03/2013

I’ve got training logs that go back to the 1970s when I
first started recording my workouts. My heart rate data started in 1983, power in
1995. I had intended to go back and review all of that before sitting down to
write this. But last weekend we flew to Lucca, Italy, where I am now. Preparing
to leave is always a hassle. But being gone from my office for two months meant
getting a lot done before the trip. I never got around to checking my training
records, so much of what follows is based on memory. And it seems the older I
get, the better I used to be.

Things appear to be changing this year. I’m not sure if it’s
my age that’s behind it, just an aberration, or the inevitable circumstances of
a busy life in 2013 with lots of travel. Of course, it could be some
combination of all of these – and more. Regardless, it’s disturbing and has me
wondering.

By “changing” I mean I’ve become less powerful. And it seems
like it happened all of a sudden. In March I tested my Functional Threshold
Power (FTP) and it was right where it has been for the last six springs when I first
started testing this marker of performance. This was done in Scottsdale, Ariz.
where I spend my winters. My summers are in Boulder. My power is always
considerably lower in the latter due to the altitude. And sure enough, my FTP
was where it always is in the first few weeks after arriving at 5500 feet –
down about 8% from Scottsdale where I live at around 1800 feet.

Usually, around a month into my adaptation to the higher
altitude about half of the lost watts come back. By the end of the summer when
I’m ready to head south to Scottsdale, my FTP in Boulder is about
what it was at the lower altitude in March. Then when I get back to the
lower altitude I see my peak FTP for the season.

But not this year. Things were different. My FTP in Boulder
never rose. It stayed at the -8% decrement all summer. And when I got back to
Scottsdale, it didn’t come up – at all. To add to the concerns, my sprint power
is the lowest it’s been since I started testing it. Could these changes be the
first signs of age catching up with me?

For many years my FTP and sprint have been about the same
with only seasonal or environmental (altitude in Boulder, summer heat in
Scottsdale) shifts. My power for specific types of workouts, especially
intervals and tempo rides (here’s the questionable memory part), has changed
very little since 1995. As a 50-something rider I was slightly above average
at, for example, time trials and climbing back then. Fifteen years later I’m a
much better-than-average senior rider for TTs and hills. I don’t think I improved;
my age peers just slowed down more. But now I may be catching up with them, it
seems.

Of course, we are all going to have reduced athletic performance in
endurance sports as we age. It’s inevitable. But we really don’t expect to see it happen - ever. And when it does, as I seem to be experiencing this
year, it’s a bit frightening.

How much of a change should we expect? And when?

There was a great study that came out of Boise State
University in 2009 – “Masters Athletes: An Analysis of Running, Swimming and
Cycling Performance by Age and Gender” (Ransdell). The problem with most
studies on athletes and aging is that they look at broad cross sections of various
age categories by gender. That means they are comparing a wide range of
abilities – front to back of pack – with motivation having a lot to do with
performance. Some people simply aren’t motivated to train. And as the number of
participants in endurance sports increases, the percentage of those who could
not care less about performance and are only doing it for social reasons is
likely to increase. That waters down the data so that we really don’t know what
the true impact of age on performance is likely to be.

The authors of the Ransdell study examined only current US
and World record holders by age groups in three sports – swimming, running, and
cycling. That means we are now able to better understand what happens when
motivation to train and compete is taken out of the equation leaving only age
and gender as the modifiers of performance.

The following three charts are based on data from this
study. While the scientists looked at several event distances within each
sport, I’ve selected out only the longest and most common, long-endurance
distances – 1500m swim, marathon, and 40k time trial. On the left side of each
chart (the X axis) are the times of the records and across the bottom (Y axis)
are the age groups. The charts aren’t terribly precise but give us a good look
at trends.

Note from these charts that in the age groups from 50-59 there is a
slight decrease in performance with it being greatest in swimming (the times get slower as indicated by rising
lines). Women’s performances tend to decline even faster than the men’s,
especially in running. Swimming shows the least gender-related decline.

These findings are roughly in agreement with other papers
that also studied elite age-group athletes. For example, Wright and Perricelli
looked at the performances of senior Olympians (50+) in the 2001 National
Senior Olympic Games. Both male and female performances declined by about 3 to
4% per year from age 50 to 85, but at a great rate after age 75.

Tanaka and Seals looked at US Masters Swimming Championship
results from 1991 to 1995. They found a steady decline in performance until
about age 70 when times started declining at an exponential rate. The declines
were greater in women than in men.

Many other researchers have found similar rates of decrease
in elite master-athlete performances at national championships in swimming
(Donato, Fairbrother) and triathlon (Lepers). In the triathlon paper Ironman
age group performances declined faster than for those doing Olympic-distance
races. I’ll get to the assumed reason why from the authors in an upcoming post
here.

So it appears we can expect to slow down significantly some
time in our 50s and experience the greatest negative rates of change in our 70s
and beyond. (Want to guess what my next birthday will be? Right. 70.) The key
questions are, why are these changes taking place and what can be done to slow
them? That’s what I’ll take a look at in my next three posts.

08/07/2013

I’ve always considered my racing weight to be 154 pounds
(70kg). Why? That’s what I weighed when I was 18 years old. Over the years my
out-of-season weight has gradually climbed. In my 30s and 40s I had no trouble staying
around 154 pounds year round. In the following decade it rose to the high 150s.
In my 60s it would climb to the mid-160s in the winter. I had to very careful
with how much I ate. I viewed weight management as calories in vs. calories out
(more on that shortly).

What I’m going to describe here is the changes I’ve made in
my diet in the past year and what the results have been both for body weight
and performance. Not all can expect the same results from dietary changes.
These are quite individualized. So please realize that I am not telling you or
anyone else how to deal with body weight issues. In fact, I usually avoid
talking or writing about either nutrition or weight. Both are hot button issues
for a lot of people and for some unknown reason produce emotional reactions. I
get angry emails from people whenever I write about either. It always amazes me
that there is such a reaction. I’m afraid some get nutrition and religion
confused. Both are generally belief-based systems. I much prefer to work with
data rather than belief. So that’s what I’m going to describe here.

With that caveat out of the way, let’s get back to racing
weight and age.

Why do we commonly gain weight as we age?

The following excerpt is from the book, Why
We Get Fat by Gary Taubes and may help to explain
what’s going as we age.

“One reason men get fatter above the
waist as they age is that they secrete less testosterone, a male sex hormone, and
testosterone suppresses LPL [an enzyme – lipoprotein lipase] activity on the
abdominal fat cells. Less testosterone means more LPL activity on the fat cells
of the gut, and so more fat.

In women, the activity of LPL is high on
the fat cells below the waist, which is why they tend to fatten around the hips
and butt, and low on the fat cells of the gut. After menopause, the LPL
activity in women’s abdominal fat catches up to that of men, and so they tend
to put on excess fat there, too.”

So, back to my personal battle with about 10 pounds of
annual fat gain. Last fall I started following Tim Noakes on Twitter. He’s the
author of The Lore of Running and several other excellent books. It just so happens that Noakes was also
dealing with a weight gain issue as he aged into his 60s. He’s a runner. He had
discovered a solution and tweeted about it frequently. In fact, he still does
(you can follow him on Twitter at @proftimnoakes). He simply adopted a
low-carb, high-fat diet (LCHF). It’s not like this was his invention. LCHF has
been around for well over a century (you can read his brief summary of this way
of eating in his new book Challenging
Beliefs). I
decided to give a try.

At first, I was a bit reluctant to do it for several reasons
which I’ll get to soon, but I’ve always used myself as a lab rat when it comes
to new ideas. I’ve discovered some interesting things this way of which I
originally was skeptical. That’s largely how the training methodology I
describe in my Training Bible books came about. I just tried new stuff I heard
of from other athletes, coaches and sports scientists. This is how I came to
eat a Paleo diet and why I now place my bike cleats
at the midsole.

So why was I a bit reluctant to give LCHF a try? Well, for
one I was concerned about my training and racing. Would my glycogen stores be
low? Might that mean poor performance? Also, we’ve been told by the US government,
the medical profession and nutritionists since the 1970s that dietary fat
causes coronary artery disease. And in my world (I enjoy racing well and
being alive!) these were big concerns. So I began to read anything I could find
on these topics. I’m not going to go into all of these here as it’s now been 10
months of almost daily reading of online articles, books and research. (If interested
in an introduction to these topics I’d suggest reading The Art of and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance and Good Calories, Bad Calories as starting points.)

After initially reading both sides of the issues, I decided
to give it a try. The bottom line is that last fall I lost 8 pounds in 9 weeks
by eating more fat and less carbohydrate. That was 5% of my body weight (160
pounds – at the time I was well on my way to my normal winter weight). I was
never hungry. In fact, it seemed like the more fat I ate, the more weight I
lost.

I learned that weight loss is not just calories in vs
calories out. I used to lose weight that way. It works in the short term. When it was time to
lose weight in the base period I’d workout, estimate the calories burned and
not quite replace all of them. But there is an obvious downside. Not replacing
the calories means you are hungry - a lot. So in order to lose excess fat by
relying on not replacing expended calories, I had to be willing to put up with
hunger. This isn’t easy for me or anyone else. But I used to view it as one of
the “sacrifices” I must make to perform well. As soon as the race season ended and
I abandoned frequent hunger the weight would slowly come back. Hunger is not
pleasant. There is a limit to how long I could put up with it.

What I learned from all of this is that weight loss can also
be achieved by changing the foods I eat. Hunger does not have to be an issue.
This is where LCHF comes in. It has to do with insulin production and also with
something called “insulin resistance” in more extreme cases than mine. (I’m not
going to go into the physiology of insulin here as that’s a bit outside of the
scope of this post. But if you want to read the details go here and here.)

The primary change I made was greatly reducing sugar and cutting
back on fruit. I used to eat 5 to 7 servings of fruit a day. That’s roughly 600
calories of carbs from fruit, about 20 to 25% of my calories for the day. I now eat less
than one serving per day on average. Foods high in fat I now eat a lot more of
are olive oil, coconut milk, nuts, nut butter, eggs, avocado, and bacon along
with the normal Paleo foods I’ve eaten since 1994 — animal products, especially
fish and poultry, and vegetables. Foods high in fat I eat only a little of are
dairy products. I avoid as best I can trans fats (“hydrogenated” on the label)
and omega 6 oils (for example, soy, peanut, cottonseed, corn, safflower). Both
categories are found in almost all processed and packaged foods in the grocery,
especially junk foods. I seldom eat grains — probably less than one serving per
month. I once used these as recovery foods on an almost daily basis.

So what’s happened to my training and performance since the
switch to LCHF?

During rides I take in only water unless it lasts longer
than 4 hours. In that case I will carry a sports drink in one bottle and save
it for the latter portion of the workout. I typically do intervals of various
intensities both above and below the lactate threshold, tempo, and aerobic
endurance sessions. These are all less than 3 hours. Water only. In the summer
I do rides well in excess of 3 hours in the mountains of Colorado with Intensity Factors generally between 75 and 85%. I’ve done rides of greater than 5 hours several
times this summer at 70 to 80% taking in no more than a few ounces of a sports
drink. There has been no bonking, unusual fatigue or loss of performance from how
I’ve done in the past when I was taking in a lot of sports drink.

So what’s going on? Apparently my body has adapted to using
more fat for fuel thus sparing glycogen since my diet changed back in October.
In exercise physiology terms this would be called a lowered respiratory
quotient (RQ).

I should point out that eating a LCHF diet has not directly
improved my performance. I’m not faster now than I was before. This is common
in the research I’ve read on the topic. What it has improved is getting to and
staying at race weight without calorie counting or hunger.

Of course, what’s missing in my recent experience is long
road races with lots of deeply anaerobic efforts with each lasting several
seconds to a few minutes. I’ve not been able to do any such races this year (a long
story that has to do with my annual pilgrimage from Arizona to Colorado every
summer). It could well be that my top end power in frequent max efforts during
a race won’t be sustainable on this diet. Such efforts are typically the determiners
of road race and criterium outcomes. But I don’t see any downsides for steady
state events done at or below the lactate threshold. This would include non-drafting
triathlon, road running, and time trialing.

Will this work for you? I can’t say. There are simply too
many variables when it comes to the metabolic systems of individuals. All I’ve
done is an experiment with 1 subject – me. And, obviously, there was no control
or double blind administration. There’s only one other person who has tried it
along with me – a friend of many years, Bill Cofer. Bill is a 65-year-old, serious
recreational cyclist who has been trying to shed more than 30 pounds for the
last 20-some years by restricting calories. He started a LCHF diet in February
and has so far dropped 27 pounds. His experience with hunger and refueling in
workouts has been much the same as mine.

Okay, so now I have n=2. But again, that doesn’t mean you
should expect the same results.

This post is not intended as a general guideline for all
aging athletes on “how to lose weight” or “how to improve performance.” It is
simply a description of something that seems to have been working for me for
about 10 months. I’ve still got a lot of learning to do on this subject.

As always, your comments on personal experiences with an
LCHF diet would be greatly appreciated.

07/16/2013

It seems there is never enough time to do all I want to do.
By the time I watch the Tour de France, work out a few hours, answer emails (it
seems that is what I mostly do these days), and other stuff I can’t always
account for, there is not enough time left to devote to things I enjoy such as
writing. I expect you have the same problem. I thought when I cut back on
working (I’m now retired from full-time coaching—more on that at another time)
that there would be more free time. Ain’t so.

Back to Recovery

Speaking of aging, I was in the mountain community of
Breckinridge, Colorado on the July Fourth holiday weekend. While there it
dawned on me that there is another aspect of my recovery I didn’t mention in my
last post on the topic.

My family drove up to Breck on the afternoon of July 3. That
morning I did my normal Wednesday workout in Boulder: 2 x 25-minute hill climbs
on a 9% grade at about 90% of FTP followed by 8 to 12 minutes of short,
anaerobic endurance intervals at 120% of FTP. These latter intervals are also
on a hill, but not as steep. With warm-up and cool down the session lasts about
2.5 hours. It pretty well leaves me wasted for a day or so.

What struck me while in Breck was that two days after the workout,
despite riding easily and sleeping and eating well, I was still not even close
to being recovered. That’s unusual. Then it dawned on me: I was living and
sleeping at about 9600 feet (3100m) and my “easy” rides had taken me to over
11,000 feet (3600m). You simply don’t recover as quickly at such altitudes.

The same is true when back in Boulder, where I spend my
summers. Our home here is about 5200 feet (1680m). That altitude also has
negative consequences for recovery and makes sleep, nutrition and everything
else I do to hasten recovery even more important. There’s an obvious difference
to how much training stress I can manage here as compared with Scottsdale,
Ariz. where we stay in the winter – 1800 feet (580m). In Boulder I can manage
only two high-stress workouts per week. In Scottsdale it’s usually three and
even four when in the base period.

The aerobic-enhancement advantage of living at a high
altitude may well be offset by the slower recovery and decreased power
production of all workouts. (What I’ve learned about how to modify training at
altitude is a another topic for a future post.)

Also of interest on this topic of aging and recovery are the
comments that older athletes have posted and the emails I have received from
others in the past two weeks. Most have agreed that they also have experienced
a slowing of their recovery rate as they age. The most common solutions they
report using are decreasing the total weekly workload and allowing more time
for recovery between challenging workouts. Please continue to give me your
thoughts on this.

And My Aging Eyes

I guess this could be called an ad for one of my sponsors,
but it’s warranted. I managed to break my every-day glasses last week. And I
only brought one pair with me from Scottsdale. That made driving at night,
going to movies and watching TV a bit challenging. So I asked ADS Sports Eyewear, which I
mentioned in a previous post on this topic, to make some replacement glasses with clear lenses for me using the same frame
as they used for my prescription Oakley sunglasses. I had them in a week and I’m happy to now have my vision back. They’re fast
and the quality is excellent. Thanks ADS!

Moving On

The next topic I want to write about is another common one
for aging athletes: weight gain. I hope to do that as soon as I get caught up
with email.

06/30/2013

When I was
in college around 50 years ago (wow, am I really that old?) I was a runner on
the track team. The coach used to have us do what I now call "Anaerobic
Endurance" intervals 3 to 5 times each week. Back then I called them
"intervals 'til you puke." Because that's basically what we did.

We'd warm-up
on our own and then the coach would blow his whistle. That meant we were to jog
over to where he was sitting in the stands next to the start-finish line on the
track. He looked a bit like Buddha with a whistle, stopwatch and can of Coke.
We knew what was next: 440-yard intervals (we didn't have metric tracks back
then) with short recoveries. We never knew how many we were going to do, how
fast we should run them (other than "as fast as possible"), how to
pace them or how long the recoveries were going to be. We may wind up doing a
dozen or 15 or 7. Nobody knew, not even the coach. When people started throwing
up he'd give us a longer recovery and only a couple more intervals. We always hoped
that someone would toss their cookies so we could get it over with as soon as
possible. That's sports science 50 years ago.

Interesting
thing was, in my youth I could do that workout night after night for days and
even weeks with only 2 days of recovery in a week (no one trained on the
weekends back then). And I would be ready to go hard again the next day. Today
if I tried to do 3 to 5 AE interval workouts ('til I puked!) in a single week
I'd soon be totally wasted and by the third back-to-back interval day my
performance would be going rapidly south. The fourth or fifth such session (if
I managed to even start them) would be a joke. There's simply no way I could do
that workout day after day now.

In fact,
this is what I hear from nearly every aging athlete I talk with about getting
old. There is little in the way of research on this, especially with truly
“old” athletes, by which I mean over age 55. But one study from a few years ago
compared the perceptions of 9 older (45 +/-6 years) and 9 younger (24 +/-5
years) well-trained athletes (1). All of the subjects did 3 consecutive days of
30 minute time trials. Each reported their subjective measures of soreness,
fatigue and recovery daily. While there were no significant changes in
performance over the 3 days for the subjects in either group, the older
athletes reported significantly higher levels of soreness and fatigue and lower
levels of recovery.

One study
isn’t much in the way of evidence, but based on what I’ve experienced and what
older athletes tell me, it seems to be the case. We simply don't recover as
quickly as we did when younger. And it seems getting everything dialed in just
right is increasingly critical to our recovery. The two most critical are sleep
and nutrition--as they are for all athletes. It's just that when you are young
you can mess these up and still get away with it. In college I'd stay up most
of the night studying, eat crappy food, and still manage to do "puke
intervals" several times a week with little degradation in performance.

The
few studies I can find on the topic of nutrition, recovery and aging, indicate
that older athletes may need more protein in recovery than do younger ones
(2,3). This implies that there may be a reduced need for carbohydrate during
recovery. In fact another study found that healthy, elderly men (non-athletes)
had a reduced capacity to oxidize carbs and an increased capacity to use fat
for fuel (4). Whether or not this also applies to athletes is currently open
for conjecture.

I've been
doing some tinkering with my nutrition in the last 8 months and the results have been
really interesting. I'm going to devote an entire post to that soon, so won't
touch on it now. Whatever you've found works well for you when it comes to diet
simply can't be compromised as you get older. Only a few aging athletes who are truly unique can continue eating lots of junk food and still perform at a high level
well into their 50s, 60s and 70s. I've certainly found that I can't.

Sleep is an
interesting phenomenon. In college I could sleep 10 to 12 hours straight on a
weekend regardless of whether I was in-season and training hard or not. Now it seems I only need 6 to 7 hours a night
regardless of training. It's rare that I sleep more than 7. I don't know what's
going on here, but I've had a few other senior athletes also tell me this. But
it's got to be every night. I can’t
miss a few hours of sleep like I used to and still perform well.

I know of
some older athletes who swear napping is successful for them. I don't doubt
them at all, but it seems there is no way to fit that into my lifestyle.
Something would have to change. Maybe you can do. It's probably a good thing.

So that's
the Big Two for recovery--sleep and nutrition.

I've also
tried lots of stuff beyond those two to speed recovery. Some have helped a
little (compression socks, elevating legs, massage, cold water immersion, and
some new recovery products such as Firefly and Barefooter shoes). Of course, when the change is barely perceptible I always
wonder if it's a placebo effect or "real." The only thing I've found
that seems to have a significant
impact on speeding up my recovery from hard workouts is “Recovery Boots.”
(That’s my granddaughter, Keara, demo’ing the Boots in this picture.)

I got these
two years ago and, as always, was somewhat skeptical at first (it’s a good idea
to be skeptical of everything as we motivated athletes tend to buy
any snake oil that comes along if we think it may give us a slight edge). But
that never stops me from trying something. (I like to use myself as a lab rat,
as you’ll see in my next blog post.) I was soon convinced. I use them after all
hard workouts and races now. Typically, I spend an hour in them in the evening
after a high workload day. They are a bit like the combination of massage and
compression garments. They slowly inflate starting at the foot and ankle, next
apply pressure up the lower leg, then the knee and lower thigh, and finish with
the upper thigh. The pressure is released and it starts over again. By the next day my legs are noticeably more recovered than
when I don't use them (which happens when I travel). Again, is it placebo? I
don't know but I'm unwilling to go without them for several days to find out.

I'd be
interested in hearing what other older (50+) athletes have found works for them
when it comes to recovery. Please feel
free to post a comment here. I've been thinking about writing a book on this
subject, so any ideas and leads I can get from you would be much appreciated.
Thanks.

06/10/2013

It's been quite a while since I posted here. I used to think I was simply too busy due to travel, but now that I'm on vacation in Boulder for the summer I'm coming to realize that I'm just lazy. It's well past the time to get involved again.

-------------------------------------------------

Lately I've been thinking a lot about my age.

I’m 69. When I was younger it never occurred to me that I’d
ever be this old. But some how it happened. In the following weeks I’ll write
about some of the physiological changes I’ve experienced due to aging and what
I’ve learned about them. It isn’t pretty. Some are big deals – such as tendencies
to add body fat and slow recovery from exercise. Others are merely nuisances.
That’s where I’m going with this first post on the topic.

One of the greatest inconveniences of aging, I’ve found, is the
loss of near vision – the need for bifocals. It seems that every product on the
market, from home thermostats to cell phones, was designed by someone who is 30
years old with excellent eyes. Why do they all use such small fonts? Don’t they
understand that it’s mostly people over 50 who can most easily afford them? In
this hard-to-read category are bicycle handlebar computers and head units.

Some head units are easier on old eyes than others. But in
the aero position with the head tucked in and low, the only way to read my
Garmin 800 is to raise up to get some distance between my eyeballs and the head
unit thus greatly increasing drag, or to wear bifocals which is beyond
nuisance. I’ve tried stick-on bifocals on my prescription Oakley sunglasses. That didn’t work too well. I’m nearsighted so having a bifocal on top of the
prescription lens made for fuzzy vision up close. They worked OK with non-prescription
sunglasses but became cloudy over time. And without the prescription lens,
looking up the road was always a bit blurry. Exasperating.

Recently I heard of a company making prescription-cycling
lenses using a new digital technology - ADS Sports Eyewear. So I had a
pair of lenses made for some Oakley frames. What a difference! Now with a free-form,
digital, progressive bifocal I can easily read my head unit while low in the
time trial position, and I can see clearly up the road. It’s remarkable how
such a seemingly small thing as this could so greatly improve my enjoyment of
riding a bike.

In addition, my peripheral vision with a wrap-around frame
is just as crisp and clear, as it is front and center. And the ADS lenses are
no thicker than my old non-prescription Oakley lenses. This is a clear
improvement over the prescription, wrap-around sunglasses I’ve had before with
the corrective lens “sandwiched” on to a standard, non-prescription lens. That
technology made for limited peripheral vision and bulky, ugly sunglasses – and without
bifocals.

I was so impressed by ADS’s lenses and service that I asked
them to be one of my sponsors (you can see them in my new sponsor section on
the right side of my blog home page).

The price for a pair of ADS sunglasses depends on several
variables. ADS can use your existing frames so long as they are in good
condition and will work with their lens. The lens-only price ranges from $119.00 for a clear, single vision lens
to $219.00 for the polarized version. A progressive bifocal section in
the bottom will add about $200.00 to the lens price. Or you can buy a
lens and frame package. Frame
prices average between $79.00 and $200.00. Standard cycling frames are
available from several companies such as Oakley, Nike, Adidas, Kaenon, Wiley,
Bolle and Smith. The ADS web page for cycling sunglasses shows your options. All of the
sunglasses on the page are prescription-ready.

In my next post
I’ll comment on recovery devices I’ve been trying out over the last several months and what I’ve discovered
about them. All, of course, from the perspective of aging. That will be
followed by the topic of body weight and aging. Again, I’ve been tinkering,
reading research and found some interesting stuff.

04/24/2013

Earlier this month I reported on a study of block
periodization that found it superior to a traditional (linear) periodization model. This
study lasted 4 weeks with well-trained cyclists in the two groups (Block and Traditional
periodization) doing the same workouts. The only difference was that the Block
group did 5 of the 8 high intensity training sessions (HIT) in the first week
and then only 1 HIT per week in the following 3 weeks. The Traditional group
did 2 HIT each week. They both also did low intensity training (LIT).

The results were rather remarkable. The Block group had an
increase in VO2max of 4.6%, peak power at VO2max rose 2.1%, and their power at
approximately their aerobic thresholds rose a whopping 10%. There were no
changes for the Traditional periodization group, which seems strange but may
tell us that 4 weeks of traditional periodization is not enough to stimulate
significant change. Perhaps.

So along comes a 12-week follow-up study from the same Norwegian group of researchers at Lillehammer University. They
used the same study design only did the above 4-week mesocycle 3 times for
each group. The results were even more remarkable. I’ll come back to that
shortly. But first let’s take a look at what the researchers called “high” and
“low” intensity workouts.

Using heart rate monitors, all workouts were divided into
three zones:

Zone 1 60-82% of max HR (MHR)

Zone 2 83-87% of MHR

Zone 3 88-100% of MHR

At 82% of MHR an athlete is usually in the vicinity of their
lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR), the point at which heavy breathing begins
and is marked by the sensation of being “redlined.” Some athletes’ LTHRs are at
a higher percentage of MHR and some are lower. (This is why I recommend LTHR
rather than MHR for setting up heart rate zones; it’s simply a more accurate
way of defining the most critical heart rate intensity for serious athletes.)

All of the cyclists (15 well-trained riders) in this study
did LIT in zone 1. Their HIT was in zone 3. These HIT sessions are critical to
understanding this study as these are more than likely what produced the
remarkable results.

All HIT was done as intervals. They did either 6 x 5 minutes
at zone 3 with 2.5-minute recoveries, or 5 x 6 minutes at zone 3 with 3-minute
recoveries. So they totaled 30 minutes of zone 3 in a single session. These are killer workouts. Extremely hard. If you
use my heart rate zone system, their zone 3 is the equivalent of my high zone 5b
and zone 5c. In other words, the athletes were doing intervals at right around
their VO2max. Other research has shown that well-trained cyclists can only maintain their VO2max velocity for
about 3 to 5 minutes. VO2max velocity and VO2max heart rate aren’t exactly the
same thing but I think it safe to say that each interval was nearly a max
effort. And the recoveries were very brief. For a VO2max interval I usually
assign a recovery after each that is about the same duration as the preceding
high-intensity piece. Here they did recoveries that were only half as long.

I wouldn’t recommend doing such a workout, let alone 5 times
in a week as the Block athletes did in this study. I can imagine how difficult
it must have been for the subjects to finish each subsequent session in the 5
HIT-session weeks (in weeks 1, 5 and 9).

But the results were, indeed, impressive. And as may be
expected, the numbers were higher than with the 4-week study I reviewed above.
In this more recent research VO2max for the Block athletes rose on average 8.8%
compared with 3.7% for the Traditional group. Power at 2mmol/L lactate (about aerobic
threshold) rose 22% for Block and 10% for Traditional. They also did a
40-minute time trial to see what average power they could produce. The Block
athletes’ rose 8.2% while the Traditionals’ went up 4.1%. The difference
between these time trial results was insignificant.

The protocol used for the Block group in both of these studies is similar to
what is sometimes called “crash” training as described in my Triathlete’s Training Bible, Cyclist’s Training Bible, and Mountain Biker’s Training Bible books. In this extreme training strategy, workload is greatly increased for
several days followed by several days of reduced training. This has been shown
to stimulate significant changes in fitness, but the risks are also extreme.
You can read more about it in my books.

This is an excellent study as research on periodization of
endurance athletes is rare. There are only a few as most use weight lifting as
their sport focus. And the fact that this one lasted 12 weeks also makes it
exceptional. The downside of all periodization studies is what I mentioned in
my last piece on the subject—both the subjects and the researchers know who is
following which protocol. That always introduces the placebo effect as a
variable.

Nevertheless, I am convinced that block periodization is
superior to traditional (linear) periodization for the advanced athlete. By “advanced” what I mean is someone who
has been training seriously and consistently for years, has attained a very
high level of performance, and is so close to their potential that producing
greater fitness improvements is extremely difficult to do. Most professional
endurance athletes and elite age group athletes fall into this category. They
would more than likely benefit from a block periodization program—if they know
how to do it. It’s not as simple as it seems from these studies and requires
careful planning to pull off.

Athletes who are not what I am calling advanced here are
still better off following a more traditional periodization program as
described in my books. For them a block plan may well produce a loss of fitness
since the training emphasis is focused on only one or two abilities in each
mesocycle.

Crash training may be done by either group but must be used
with caution as it can easily result in injury, illness and burnout. Again,
read more about it in my Training Bible books before attempting it.

04/11/2013

I was asked twice this week how I taper athletes for their
A-priority races, once by an athlete and also by a coach. I told them that I
would write about it in my blog, but later realized I had already done so several
times. So rather than do it all over again I’ll just provide the links to four posts on the topic. I’ll also summarize
each so you can pick out the one that best matches your interests, should you
want to read about it (click on the title to go to the post).

In this post from 2009 you will find an explanation of the
three elements of race preparedness – fitness, fatigue and form. This is
essential to understanding what’s happening when you peak properly. It goes on
to describe the basics of the peaking process through the interplay of
intensity and rest/recovery with an emphasis on the latter.

This post is also from 2009 and is a follow up to the one
above providing graphic illustrations of how I taper and peak athletes. This
will make much more sense if you use a power meter (bike) or speed-distance
device (run) along with the Performance Management Chart (PMC) at TrainingPeaks or WKO+
software.
The two charts show the actual peaking design for a road cyclist and an Ironman
triathlete.

As the title implies, this very short piece uses two of the
athletes I coached in 2010 – a 70.3 triathlete and a road cyclist – to compare
graphically how their bike power was distributed by training zones as they went
through their final preparations for their A races.

If you search for “peaking” on the home page of my blog you’ll find much more detail on peaking including topics such as
projecting race readiness, strong and weak form, and peak performance
predictors.

04/04/2013

One of my favorite pastimes is reading sports science
research. Most days start with me grabing an abstract from the top of my to-be-read list and seeing what’s new. I know,
I’m weird that way. But I expect we are each strange in some way. My weirdness occasionally pays off. Recently I came across some new studies on topics I’ve
written about before – compression clothing and block periodization. Here are
some research updates.

Compression clothing

I first wrote on compression clothing in October 2007 after seeing so many athletes in the Hawaii Ironman wearing them in the race
that year. They continue to be used extensively in many endurance sports. There
wasn’t much in the research literature on them then, and over the years only a
little has been added. I’ve continued to follow the topic and done updates
periodically (March 2009, February 2011, May 2011). Here are two more recent studies followed by comments.

Fourteen
male triathletes were divided into two test groups. One group wore a full
leg-length compression stockings and the other a similar looking non-compression
garment continuously for 24 hours after a 40k time trial. Following the day of
recovery while wearing the stockings they took them off and once again did the
40k TT. One week later the groups reversed the clothing worn and repeated the
entire 40k time trial-24 hours of recovery wearing the socks-40k time trial
protocol.

After
wearing the compression stockings performance time in the second time trial
improved, on average, by 1.2% and average power increased 3.3% compared with
wearing the non-compression stockings. The athletes’ rating of perceived
exertion during the subsequent tests did not change significantly.

This is a review of the existing literature on the effect of
compression garments on performance and recovery. The review found little
change in performance while wearing the garments, but they noted improvements
in recovery when the subjects wore them.

My opinion on compression clothing has not changed since I
first wrote about them five years ago. I doubt there is a significant
improvement in performance while wearing them. In a triathlon, the time to put
them on in T1 is probably greater than any time gained while wearing them. But
there may be a post-workout benefit that could speed recovery prior to the next
workout or race. I’ll keep watching for this topic in the literature and let
you know what I find.

Block periodization

Back in 2011 I described a relatively new way of organizing training
time for advanced athletes called “block periodization” (here, here and here). In block periodization the athlete focuses on only one or two aspects of
fitness (what I call “abilities:” aerobic endurance, muscular force, speed
skills, muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance and sprint power) within a
block lasting for a short time – usually three to six weeks. As explained in
the above previous blog posts, block periodization is intended only for
advanced athletes. Moderately trained athletes are best advised to follow a
linear (“classic “or “traditional”) periodization plan as described in my
Training Bible books.

There is very little research done on periodization and that
which is available usually uses strength athletes as subjects. Such studies of
endurance athletes are rare. But here is one that is a recent update on the
topic of periodization.

Nineteen experienced and fit cyclists were divided into two
groups for this Norwegian study comparing block and traditional periodization.
Each group trained for 4 weeks and did 8, high-intensity interval sessions and
otherwise low-intensity aerobic training. Their training volume, both for high-
and low-intensity workouts, was the same over the 4 weeks. The only difference
was how the weeks were structured.

The 10 riders following the block periodization protocol did
5 of their 8 interval sessions in the first week and then only one each in the
last 3 weeks (along with the low-intensity sessions). This concentration on only
one ability for a brief period of time followed by maintenance is common in
block periodization.

The other group of cyclists who followed the traditional
periodization plan spread the 8 intense workouts over the 4 weeks doing 2 each
week along with the low-intensity sessions on the other days.

So what was the result? Those following a block
periodization program improved their VO2max (one physiological indicator of
aerobic fitness) by 4.6% (+/-3.7%). This group started with an average VO2max
of 62.2 mLO2/kg/minute so they bumped the average up to just over 65. Their
peak power at VO2max increased by 2.1% (+/-2.8%). And this group elevated their
power at 2mmol/L of lactate (approximately their aerobic thresholds, similar to
low zone 2) by 10% (+/-12%). The traditional periodization group saw no significant
changes in these same metrics.

The block periodization group’s numbers are all remarkable
given that the gains would have almost certainly been attained in just the
first week with only 5 hard workouts. That makes me wonder. One of the problems
with such a study is that it isn’t possible to use a double-blind protocol in
which neither the subjects nor the researchers know who is following which
protocol. This raises the question of a placebo effect. But also note that some
of the block periodization subjects had decreases in both their VO2max (-0.7%)
and aerobic threshold (-2%) power. That’s a good sign in a way as it confirms
what happens in the real world – some positively respond to the protocol and
some get worse. It happens in nearly all aspects of training. Such is life.

So far the few studies I’ve seen on the topic have indicated
that there may be good reasons for advanced and highly fit athletes to follow a
block periodization program. If you fall into this rather small club be sure to
read my other blog posts listed above before making such significant changes to
your training.

03/05/2013

There have been some big gaps between my posts here this
winter. This is my busy season with lots of travel. It seems there is never
enough time. I’m sure you know the feeling.

In my last blog as an intro to the topic of keeping it simple I explained how I've
been on a quest the last couple of years to make training more user friendly by
focusing on those few things that are most likely to produce rapid and positive
change – what I've come to call the "Big Rocks." I also explained there that the most basic of
the Big Rocks is skills. Unfortunately, this is usually the last thing
endurance athletes are concerned about because many see aerobic and muscular
fitness as the only aspects of fitness that are truly important to performance.
But skills are also related to fitness, just not in a way we’re used to.

Most athletes could make significant and often immediate
improvements in performance by refining their sport-specific skills. By
"skills" what I mean is the ability to make the movements of the
sport in an efficient and effective manner.

"Efficiency" in sport has to do with the metabolic
cost of movement – how much stored energy, especially carbohydrate (glycogen
and glucose), it takes to make the movement. If the cost is higher than what is
necessary and common for advanced athletes then the inefficient athlete, in
order to go faster, must either produce excessive effort (and hence a greater
cost) or figure out how to reduce the expense (more skillful movement). Most
opt for the first choice and give lip service to the second.

I'm using "effective" here to mean making the
movements of the sport in such a way as to produce intended and beneficial
performance results. In other words, an effective endurance athlete is one who
is fast and powerful. This usually also requires making changes in one’s
skills.

So what I'd like to do next is get down to the Big Rocks of
efficiency and effectiveness – the skills of sport. And since the readers of
this blog are typically triathletes and road cyclists I will focus on three
sports — swimming, biking, and running. In the interest of the cyclists I'll
start with the bike so they can skip the swim and run posts that are to follow
(when I again find time!).

There is only one Big Rock for cycling. Pretty simple. This
is the starting point every season
for every cyclist regardless of the
their level of performance – pro or novice.

Get a Bike Fit

This is so simple it's almost embarrassing. Regardless, get
a bike fit done every year at the start of the winter base training period.
Yes, every year. Even if it’s the
same bike you were fit on last year. Things change. You get stronger or weaker,
more or less flexible, have developed a little niggling injury or gotten rid of
one, will do different types of races in the coming season, or forgot that you
lowered your saddle by 3mm six months ago or changed to a new stem. You may
also learn, unfortunately, that the bike you are riding simply doesn't fit you.
The frame is too big or too small. I hope that isn't the case as it means a big
out-of-pocket. I see riders in this sad situation in almost every race I go to,
especially triathlons.

Go to a professional bike fitter to have this done. Don't
have your spouse or friend do it (unless he or she is a professional fitter).
Don't ask a training partner to take a look while you're riding along. Use a
professional. Bike fitting used to nearly be all art; now it is mostly a
science. A good fitter will put you in a position that optimizes your physique,
physiology, and purpose. You'll learn how to sit on a saddle (many do it
wrong), what your head, spine and hip posture should be, and how to be more
aerodynamic.

The bottom line is that your pedaling and bike handling efficiency
and effectiveness will improve after a good fit. You’ll waste less energy and be
more powerful. And your risk of injury in the coming season will be decreased.

If you are a road cyclist who does crits, road races and
time trials you'll more than likely need two bike fits. Triathletes typically
need only fit the bike they race on.

If you're unsure who to go to for a fit ask around with
others in your sport. A good fit will cost you a few bucks ($100-200 is common
in the US but can be a lot more depending on what is done). If you are truly
serious about improving performance on the bike it's some of the best money
you'll spend. You'll come away after an hour or two as a better cyclist without
even breaking a sweat.

In the next post I’ll write about swimming. While becoming
more efficient and effective on the bike is quite simple, the swim is much more
complex.